Italy-based architecture firm AM3 Architetti Associati has proposed a flowing "food chain" to revive the existing area of Gibellina which was completely destroyed by a terrible earthquake in 1968. 

AM3 Architetti Associati's proposal is now exhibited at the Italian Pavilion for this year's Venice Architecture Biennale. The Pavilion of Italy, titled "Arcipelago Italia", is curated by Mario Cucinella Architects.

Titled Cultivating The Future, the project aims to design a new "rural lab" in the interior of a flower-shaped building, which was realised after the earthquake, while some of those buildings were never completed. 

Image © Urban Reports

After the 1968 earthquake, this bulbous building was rebuilt among the vineyards of an ancient valley, not far from the original town. "During the reconstruction, many artists and architects realized sculptures and buildings in order to give the new town a good cultural influence," said the architects.

Alongside a new rural lab, the architects also proposed the re-designing of the interior spaces with an uncompleted theatre planned by Pietro Consagra. The proposed "rural lab" is aimed to serve as an innovative learning centre proposed by the Italian Ministry of Education, which will make training an integral part of the process of development of the area.

Image © Internoesterno

"Today New Gibellina offers a great challenge aiming to create growth and development for the present and future generations through the completion of those structures. The present project is based on the idea that it is possible to make life better in New Gibellina if we are able to value the potential of the town and find the right stimuli for renewal," said the studio.

"We started by listening to the local people and we found out that the main vocation for growth and development of the area is the promotion of a high-quality food supply chain."

Image © Internoesterno

By providing an innovative space, the architects believe that students can develop and improve specific knowhow through contact and cooperation with local businesses and associations, and this experience will surely give them better working opportunities. The training and research activities of the "rural lab" is situated in the theatre, while the surrounding agricultural park will serve for experimental work.

Image © Urban Reports

"The theatre maintains its sculptural nature and is re-inhabited inside by a new building that, like a hermit crab in a shell, is grafted onto the grid of the original structure, but only partially occupies its volume: in fact, the roof of the building which was originally intended as the theatre, becomes a public square accessible by different climbing systems that run independently on the inner fronts of the sculpture ( original building); the basement, cleared and made permeable by means of a change in the soil, hosts a covered market for agricultural products."

Image © Urban Reports

The architects set the new building inside a new public space opening to a large range of functions and uses which can be changed in the course of time. "The park represents the productive nature that enters the town and serves the twofold objective of giving plant density to a bare urban centre and reconnecting transversally the two inhabited areas of the town." 

Image © Urban Reports

"Freespace is what we have here in this project : it is the offer of public space that supports the new urban configuration, but it is also an immaterial space that creates opportunities generated by," added the architects.

Top image © Internoesterno

All drawings © AM3 Architetti Associati

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